Professional opinion for a first font

Jemmy Rostandy

Hi all, I'm new to the forum (and to typography for that matter). I have just made my first font. Was wondering if anyone could give me a thought or two on things that could be improved about the font.
It was meant to be a font that looks good as body copy and headlines. 

Would you call this a sans serif font if some letters like the i and j has serif?

Craig Eliason

My guess from the appearance of this is that you’ve taken an existing font file and just moved some things around. This is potentially problematic in at least two ways: 1) if you agreed to a EULA in obtaining that font, it might have prohibited modifications, and 2) if you were to distribute your tweaked version, that would be ethically dubious and legally perilous. 

But even all that aside, by simply moving some points around you are toying with superficial details and not engaging with the real meat of type design, which includes inner and outer spacing, stroke width subtleties, and so on. 

Start from scratch. I mean look at other fonts, but don’t load them into your editor. It’s in working from the ground up that you’ll grasp in a deeper way things like where serifs are useful. You’ll make something ugly but you’ll learn. 

Jemmy Rostandy

Hi Craig, I started those from scratch. Took me three months to finish only the regular and I'm taking some break before I start working on the bold (any tips on how to progress from drawing regular to other font weights would b appreciated). I took some inspirations from some fonts including a font from a game I was playing but I did not in any way copy and paste them into the artboard or modified existing ones. I also watched lessons from this guy on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZEHLy-XSAY&t=1026s&ab_channel=KevinKing.

Any constructive criticism about the font would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Simon Cozens

The balance between consistency and inconsistency is a really important part of type design. Inconsistency adds quirkiness and interest, but too much interest draws the reader's attention away from the text and towards the glyphs themselves. And the more the text has to say, the less attention the font should grab.

So if you really want this to work for body copy, where the text has a lot to say, the glyphs need to be more ordinary and more consistent - consistent both within glyphs (top terminal of c is flared, bottom terminal is circular - why?), between glyphs ("u" and "v" terminals completely different), and with the reader's expectations of reading text in similar styles ("b" and "q" break those expectations).

I don't mean "make a boring font". What I mean is that each inconsistency needs to earn its place.

RichardW

Timid!  'I' and 'J' should really have full-blown strokes, even if they be short, rather then serifs, in a sans-serif font.  The *stroke* at the top is part of some people's handwriting.

I think you're going to need kerning before 'b' and after 'q'. 

Jemmy Rostandy

Thank you for the response Simon and Richard.. I am aware of this consitency that Simon had said:

Simon Cozens said:

The balance between consistency and inconsistency is a really important part of type design. Inconsistency adds quirkiness and interest, but too much interest draws the reader's attention away from the text and towards the glyphs themselves. And the more the text has to say, the less attention the font should grab.

So if you really want this to work for body copy, where the text has a lot to say, the glyphs need to be more ordinary and more consistent - consistent both within glyphs (top terminal of c is flared, bottom terminal is circular - why?), between glyphs ("u" and "v" terminals completely different), and with the reader's expectations of reading text in similar styles ("b" and "q" break those expectations).

I don't mean "make a boring font". What I mean is that each inconsistency needs to earn its place.

Honestly, the flared terminal of the c is done to make it feel like its one with the rest. My thought process was that I wanted each characters to have something that makes them stand out on their own, while not too distracting when used as a body text. Please let me know if you changed your mind after seeing the font application below. I would like to stress that this is a work of a novice so I wouldn't have known if the text below is up to the standards of professional type designers, as with the inner and outer spacing,etc. Thank you

RichardW said:

Timid!  'I' and 'J' should really have full-blown strokes, even if they be short, rather then serifs, in a sans-serif font.  The *stroke* at the top is part of some people's handwriting.

I think you're going to need kerning before 'b' and after 'q'. 

Thank you for the response Richard, would you care to explain what full-blown strokes mean?

RichardW

By 'full-blown' I mean with the thickness of the top stroke of 'T' or 'F'.  I hadn't noticed the serifs on the lower case 'i' and 'j'.  The one at the foot of 'i' does seem out of place, though I suppose I've got used to it from monospace fonts.  Some founts use a curved foot instead.

In my amateur opinion, it may be time to think of your design of \dotlessi and \icircumflex.  The latter can have spacing issues - [i]dîb[/i] can easily feel too crowded.  You also need to think about the diɡit '1' - a visible contrasts of 'I'/'l'/'1'/'i' make life easier for the reader, and could be helpful in photocopies of photocopies.  'O' v. '0' is widely regarded as a lost cause - 'Letter O considered harmful'.

Jemmy Rostandy

RichardW said:

By 'full-blown' I mean with the thickness of the top stroke of 'T' or 'F'.  I hadn't noticed the serifs on the lower case 'i' and 'j'.  The one at the foot of 'i' does seem out of place, though I suppose I've got used to it from monospace fonts.  Some founts use a curved foot instead.

In my amateur opinion, it may be time to think of your design of \dotlessi and \icircumflex.  The latter can have spacing issues - [i]dîb[/i] can easily feel too crowded.  You also need to think about the diɡit '1' - a visible contrasts of 'I'/'l'/'1'/'i' make life easier for the reader, and could be helpful in photocopies of photocopies.  'O' v. '0' is widely regarded as a lost cause - 'Letter O considered harmful'.

Hi Richard, Thank you for the suggestions, I will take note of them once I start adding more glyphs into the font. I have to move on to other projects first to get an actual job but will eventually get back to do characters like î.